


how the dead walk

by Lise



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: (relatively mild but still), Anorexia, Depression, Eating Disorders, Gen, Hurt Loki (Marvel), Hurt/Comfort, I am why my favorite characters can't have nice things, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Loki (Marvel) Lives, Loki is as the saying goes a goddamn mess, Mental Health Issues, New Asgard, Not Canon Compliant, POV Loki (Marvel), Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 04:21:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19310518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: Once again, Loki has been resurrected from the dead. The only thing is: he seems to have come back ever so slightly wrong.





	how the dead walk

**Author's Note:**

> Eons and eons ago, [holisticfanstuff](https://holisticfansstuff.tumblr.com/) sent me an ask on Tumblr with the prompt "Loki stops eating. It isn't a problem, until it is." It's been literal years, I'm pretty sure, but as I was going through cleaning out my inbox I ran across it and dropped it in my drafts as a particularly interesting old prompt. Shortly thereafter, this idea popped into my head as what I wanted to do with it. 
> 
> It ended up being both angstier and longer than I expected, though I really should have expected both. 
> 
> Thanks ever to [my incredible beta](http://ameliarating.tumblr.com), and to readers like you. Yes, you.

 

_My mother forbade us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them._

\- “On Walking Backwards,” Anne Carson

 

Loki had spent a great deal of his life with the awareness that something was wrong with him.

There was something wrong with him now. Something _new_ wrong with him.

That wasn’t exactly surprising, all things considered. You died and came back and did not return unscathed. He wasn’t the only one. Half of Asgard - three-quarters, really - bore the scars. Not that Loki spoke to any of them about it. No: the strangeness of his body, the way it didn’t always quite feel like his own, the occasional excruciating awareness of his own flesh like it was a snakeskin he needed to shed…

Those things, he kept to himself.

* * *

Thor was studying him with a sharp and considering eye. He wasn’t wearing the false one today, choosing the eyepatch instead; Loki hadn’t told him, but he preferred it. Familiarity, no doubt. Given the other changes in Thor, he craved some of that.

He hadn’t entirely lost the weight he’d gained in the depths of grief. At least he was drinking less, these days. Still more than Loki would like, but he hadn’t appreciated Loki’s commentary on the matter.

Thor bore his own burdens.

“What is it,” Loki said, picking at his plate. The smell of cooked meat made his stomach turn.

“You aren’t eating,” Thor said.

“You noticed,” Loki said dryly. “It’s not to my liking.”

Thor frowned. “I made it.”

“That’s probably why,” Loki said. Thor scowled at him, though it didn’t last, fading into a more somber frown..

“Loki…”

“Thor,” Loki said, matching his tone, and was rewarded with a faint flash of irritation.

“You’re too skinny.”

Loki bridled. “I am making up for your overindulgence,” he snapped, knowing it was cruel. Thor’s expression tightened.

“You weren’t here,” Thor said, his voice harsher. “You don’t get to judge me.”

“But you are permitted to judge me?”

“I am not _judging,_ ” Thor said loudly. “I only-” He broke off, seemingly at a loss for words. Several harsh, scathing, _vicious_ things supplied themselves to Loki, but he waited until the urge passed to speak. Thor didn’t deserve it. And perhaps couldn’t bear it.

“It’s the smell,” he said finally. Thor’s brows furrowed, and Loki twitched one shoulder up, then down. “Burnt flesh,” he said, and the color drained from Thor’s face. He glanced aside. “Sorry.”

“No,” Thor said, his voice a little unsteady. “It’s...fine.” His jaw worked. “I won’t...I can make something else.”

“No,” Loki said. “Thank you. I am not...particularly hungry.” He summoned a weak smile. “Don’t take it personally.”

Thor was looking at him like he did sometimes. The mixture of hunger and misery that meant he was thinking of Loki’s death and didn’t want him to know. Loki didn’t have the heart to tell him how obvious it was. “I will not,” he said. “And I am sorry. I didn’t...think of it.”

“I am glad you didn’t,” Loki said, utterly sincere. He made himself shrug. “It will probably pass.”

Thor didn’t look away. “I hope it does,” he said, and to Loki’s relief he let the subject go.

* * *

What he told Thor was a half truth.

Not a lie - the smell of meat had nauseated him. But it wasn’t just that. It was part of what was wrong with him: nothing tasted right. Nothing tasted like _anything._ It was ash and dust on his tongue, flavorless if not outright sour. There was no pleasure in it, no satisfaction.

No hunger. No _desire._ Experimentally, he tried stopping altogether, and...nothing.

It was as though he didn’t need it anymore. As though something else sustained him - or perhaps, nothing needed to, because he wasn’t truly _alive_ at all, but something else. Something between.

He worried at that thought, but there was no thirst for blood or flesh any more than there was thirst for anything else. He drank, now and again, when his mouth felt especially dry, but there was no particular pleasure in that, either.

It was the proof that he had not come back whole.

With no need, no satisfaction, no reward, it was just a waste of resources better spent on those who had not forgotten hunger. He kept it from Thor, because it would only distress him, and there was no reason to distress him, and took to wearing a glamour of healthy normalcy to ensure Thor was satisfied.

It was what it was. Loki had accepted it as part of the price of his return. Hunger was for the living. Whatever he was now...it wasn’t that.

* * *

When Valkyrie returned from her jaunt into space, she took one look at him and startled. “The fuck happened to you,” she said. Loki raised his eyebrows.

“I died,” he said.

“Ha, ha,” Valkyrie said, unamused. Her brown eyes were sharp. “Good joke. Not what I meant. You look weird.”

“Turn my head, why don’t you,” Loki said, though absently. He glanced down at himself, but nothing seemed very different to his eye. Of course, he was wearing his carefully crafted glamour, so nothing _would_ regardless. He could feel her gaze raking over him and kept his posture deliberately casual.

“I mean it,” she said. “You look _weird._ What’d you do?”

“It’s been nearly a month since I last saw you,” Loki said. “You’d have to narrow that down.”

She prowled closer, poked him in the arm and then circled slowly around him. Loki followed her with his eyes but otherwise held still, waiting.

“ _Huh,_ ” she said. He could hear the frustration in it. “Come on. Tell me what you did.”

“What makes you so certain I _did_ anything?” Loki said, hackles starting to rise. A strange look settled on Valkyrie’s face.

“I don’t _know._ I just know that when I left-” she snapped her fingers. “You’re wearing an illusion, aren’t you?”

“Why would I be wearing an illusion?”

“I don’t know,” Valkyrie said. “Why would you?”

Loki bristled. “Perhaps something to do with unwanted questions from those around me,” he said pointedly. Valkyrie just frowned at him, and he spread his hands. “What do you want? I have nothing to hide.”

“Words of a man with something to hide,” Valkyrie said. “Even if this weren’t _you._ ”

His hackles went up. “You say that as though you know me at all,” Loki said, an edge in his voice. Valkyrie’s eyes narrowed.

“ _Someone’s_ testy.”

“You were the one who approached me by telling me I _look weird,_ ” Loki snapped, and for a second thought she was going to snap back, and braced for a fight, but then she breathed out.

“Look,” she said, then stopped, shrugged one shoulder, and said, “fine, whatever. I thought something might be _wrong._ ”

A laugh bubbled up before Loki could call it back. “Something is,” he said. “A lot of things are. It’s not just _me._ ” Valkyrie was giving him that look again, like she was concerned, and it stuck in Loki’s throat. “You know that.”

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “I guess I do.”

“Nothing has changed,” Loki said.

“Uh huh,” she said. He had the feeling she didn’t believe him. And she definitely seemed...troubled. ‘Concerned’ would go too far. “That why you just about bit my head off?”

Loki flashed his teeth at her. “That isn’t a change.”

Her jaw tightened, then relaxed. “Fine,” she said after a moment. “I’ll just ask Thor if he’s noticed anything.”

Loki tensed. “Don’t,” he said, and then swore when he realized that she’d just baited him. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes as if that would soothe the ache starting behind them. “Thor has enough troubling him as it is. What would you even tell him?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

Loki dropped his hands and looked at Valkyrie. Her expression was hard to read, but she looked tense, braced for a blow. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then shook his head. “I meant what I said,” he said. “There _is_ nothing new. Just the same scars, and sometimes they are more raw than others.”

Now she looked uncomfortable, glancing away and just kind of jerking her chin down.

“And the illusion?” she said, after several long moments of silence.

For a moment Loki toyed with the idea of being honest with her. But the thought died quickly. “Vanity,” he said.

She didn’t believe him. He could see it, see her trying to decide if she needed to press, if what he wasn’t saying was dangerous and needed to be dragged out of him. To his relief, she seemed to accept that it was his secret to keep.

“All right,” she said. “Have it your way.”

When she left, he staggered a little and had to catch himself on the nearest wall. He closed his eyes and counted to three. His head hurt.

Retreating back indoors, he went to the bathroom and splashed some water on his face, dropping the glamour. When he looked at himself in the mirror…

A little paler, he thought. Perhaps the cut of his cheekbones a little too sharp. He could hear what Thor would say: _you’re too skinny._ Thor didn’t realize that it wasn’t _necessary_ ; that all he was doing was shedding excess flesh that was as irrelevant to this second (third? fourth?) life as his old set of armor.

He could try to explain it, but as he’d told Valkyrie: Thor had enough troubling him. Adding one more thing wouldn’t help anyone.

Licking his lips, Loki slid the glamour back into place and retreated into the dark of his own room to wait for the headache to ease.

* * *

There was a chill settled into Loki’s bones that he couldn’t shake. It felt a little like the effect of a fever, but it wasn’t - he’d checked. Chilled, and exhausted.

Something wrong, Loki thought, huddled into a nest of blankets trying futilely to get warm. Perhaps he’d come down with some sort of Midgardian disease.

Or perhaps, the thought came creeping in, this was the beginning of a slide back into the death he’d been pulled out of. Perhaps the reprieve had been temporary. Or death’s hold on him was just too strong.

That thought left him even colder.

Loki sent a brief message to Thor - _I am not feeling well -_ and crawled back into bed, closing his eyes. As he might have expected, he’d barely been sleeping for an hour when he heard Thor call, “Loki?” apparently having already let himself inside.

“I was sleeping,” Loki said, when he heard Thor stop in his doorway. “I told you I wasn’t feeling well.”

“You’re sick?” Thor sounded fretful. Loki opened one eye.

“Only tired.”

“You _look..._ strange.”

If he hadn’t been so tired, he would have snapped. As it was, he just sighed out and said, “I am not.”

Thor eyed the blankets. “Are you cold?”

Damn. “Only a little.”

Thor strode over and laid a hand on his forehead. Loki jerked away. “Thor-”

“You feel warm.”

_I am not._ “It’s the blankets.” Thor’s distress was apparent, and only growing. It scratched at Loki, distressing and irritating in equal measure. “Thor,” Loki said, trying to sound gentle but firm, “I am _fine._ ”

The look Thor gave him was searing. “Are you?” Loki almost hissed, but Thor’s next words were gentler. “You know that if something was wrong, I would want you to tell me.”

_You say that._ “I know.”

“I am not feeble.”

Loki sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment before letting his hand drop. His head was aching again, and he just wanted to lie down and sleep, or at least try for it. “I know that, Thor.”

“Sometimes you treat me like you do not,” Thor said, a little heat sliding into the words. “Like you think I will break under pressure.”

“Won’t you?” Loki said, and immediately wished he could call the words back. Thor stared at him with a mixture of dismay and anger.

“Is that what you think?” Thor said, and the betrayal in his voice tore at something in Loki’s chest. “That I am - that I am weak, and need coddling-”

“You have suffered hammer-blow on hammer-blow these last years,” Loki interrupted. “No reference to your dearly departed weapon intended. Even you cannot carry the whole of the world. That is all I meant.”

“Was it?” Thor demanded, and before Loki could answer he twisted away. “You truly have so little faith in me?”

“It is not a lack of faith,” Loki tried to protest.

“It is a lack of trust,” Thor said. He turned for the door. “I am glad at least you were honest with me about this,” he said bitterly, and slammed the door behind him.

Loki slumped back into the couch. His eyes burned and he held his breath until he had himself back under control. He’d obviously mishandled that conversation, though he couldn’t quite think how he might’ve handled it better. Couldn’t quite think in general.

What would he have said, anyway? _I think I might be dying again? I think maybe I was never really alive?_

If that was it, there was nothing Thor could do. And if he was just sick, he would get better.

He closed his eyes, exhaustion pulling him down toward sleep.

* * *

Thor hardly spoke three words to him over the next two days, and for once Loki wasn’t the one doing the avoiding. Not that it was particularly difficult, considering the malaise that continued to plague Loki and left him largely disinterested in going very far from his comfortable bed.

“If you think you’re easing his burden, you’re mistaken,” Heimdall informed Loki after a brief meeting with him, Valkyrie, and a Thor who did not so much glance in Loki’s direction. Loki gave Heimdall a sharp look.

“What do you know about it?” he said, perhaps less than pleasantly. Heimdall just raised his eyebrows in the expression that said _more than you want to._ Loki held back a snarl.

“I think,” he said tightly, “things between Thor and I are not your business.”

“In the past,” Heimdall said mildly, “things between you and Thor have very quickly become a number of peoples’ business.” It was not cruel, but it _was_ pointed, and Loki twitched.

“This is unlikely to develop into such a...situation.”

“That is a relief,” Heimdall said, “but there are quite a lot of unhappy outcomes that are less severe than all-out violence.”

Loki exhaled through his nose. “And once again,” he said bitterly, “it is for _me,_ and not Thor, to address the problem.”

“You assume I haven’t already spoken with him.”

“Have you?” Loki was beginning to feel light-headed, his thoughts sticking to themselves, though even as he noticed it it passed. Heimdall did not answer immediately, and Loki snorted. “I thought not,” he said. Something occurred to him, though, and he paused. “Heimdall...may I ask you a question?”

“What question,” Heimdall said slowly. Loki chewed on the inside of his cheek, but now that he had his moment, he didn’t know how to phrase it, and he was suddenly out of breath.

“Never mind,” he said. “It isn’t important. I should be going.” He stood.

Too quickly, apparently. His vision tunneled and the world tilted sideways. He froze, steadying himself.

“Loki?” Heimdall’s voice said, seeming to come from very far away.

“I need to go,” he said, or meant to say, but he wasn’t sure which because when he took a step back and turned, his knees buckled.

His thoughts went blank before he hit the ground.

* * *

The first coherent thought that surfaced in Loki’s mind was to wonder if he’d died again after all, but that bubble burst quickly and left him lying on his back, feeling somehow both feverish and chilled. He could hear two people talking somewhere nearby, and recognized one of the voices as Thor’s.

It took him a couple seconds longer to piece together what had happened, and to realize that he had _fainted,_ in front of _Heimdall,_ and that Thor was never going to leave this alone unless he was _very_ convincing.

At least he was on a couch, and not in some healing room. Not that there were healing rooms in New Asgard.

“Looks like he’s up,” someone said, and Loki opened his eyes the rest of the way to see Thor turning toward him, and he did indeed seem extraordinarily unhappy.

“Loki,” he said, only just short of a growl.

“Don’t make a fuss over this,” Loki said. “I was just a bit light-headed.”

Thor’s expression darkened. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what this is about,” he said.

“Is now really the time for a shouting match?” Was that Valkyrie?

“Go,” Thor said, in a voice that accepted no argument. He hadn’t heard Thor sound like that since coming back to life, and if it weren’t for the situation he might be relieved to hear it now. As it was…

“Yeah, all right, fine,” Valkyrie said after a pause. “Don’t kill him, though. You’ll regret it later.”

“ _Val._ ”

“I’m going.”

Thor’s eyes didn’t budge from Loki’s, and Loki would have held it if not for the fact that he knew he would tire first. It was less embarrassing to give up and pretend he wasn’t trying for other reasons. “What.”

“Don’t,” Thor said. “Don’t _pretend._ ”

“I am not _pretending._ I genuinely have no idea what you are talking about.”

Thor’s face scrunched up and for a moment Loki thought he would start shouting, but he balled his hands into fists and said, “why are you starving yourself?”

Loki blinked, staring blankly at Thor, whose expression only tightened further. “I beg your pardon?” Loki managed finally.

A muscle in Thor’s jaw twitched. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” he demanded. “Or - you must have meant to _keep_ me from noticing, hence the glamour. But you must have known you couldn’t hold it forever-”

“Oh,” Loki said, confusion slowly giving way to frustration. “ _That._ ”

“Yes,” Thor said, voice rumbling like thunder. “ _That._ Loki...”

“You have it wrong,” Loki said. “I’m not starving myself. I know I’ve lost some weight-”

“Some?” Thor sounded like he was going to burst for holding in his anger.

“But I don’t _need_ it,” Loki said. “This is why I was using the glamour. I knew you’d be upset, and it’s unnecessary.”

“What do you mean, you don’t need it,” Thor said, tenor of his voice changing somewhat.

Loki sighed. At this point...he sorted through various explanations he could offer, but Thor had his teeth in it now, and wasn’t going to let go until he was satisfied. “Whatever you did to bring me back,” he said, “it seems there was some...I don’t need to eat anymore.”

Thor rocked back. “What?”

Loki shrugged. “I don’t get hungry.”

“You don’t…” Thor’s expression shifted slightly. Stricken. Loki looked away from him.

“It’s all right,” he said. “I don’t even miss it. All things considered - it’s a fair trade, isn’t it?”

Thor was quiet for several moments, though Loki could hear him breathing hard. “Loki,” Thor said, “you may not be hungry but...judging by the state of your body, by the fact that you _fainted,_ you still need sustenance.”

Loki shook his head. “My body is fine.”

“It isn’t!” Thor said, his voice rising. “Have you _looked_ at yourself?” Loki looked at him blankly, and the anger bled slowly out of Thor’s expression. “You really don’t realize,” he said.

“No,” Loki said, frustrated. “ _You_ don’t. I’m not - what I was. I’m different, now. Changed. Food tastes like ash, or nothing. There is something wrong with me.” The lightheadedness was coming back. “I am not supposed to be here, I am not supposed to be _alive,_ and I don’t really think I am!”

The look on Thor’s face was as though Loki had stabbed him. His throat worked, and then he lurched forward, seizing Loki’s wrist and digging his fingers in. “Do you feel this?” he said harshly. “Do you?”

“Of course I can-”

“And cold? Or warmth? Do you feel those?”

“Yes, but-” Thor’s fingers tightened, and Loki tried to pull away. “Thor, that _hurts._ ”

“Then why would you think you aren’t alive?” Thor said. He didn’t let go. “If you can feel pain, and heat, and the cold, and touch; if you can see and smell and walk and speak with me, if you can faint and be feverish - how can you say you do not live?”

Loki stared at Thor open-mouthed, at a loss.

“If you are not supposed to be here,” Thor said, voice raw, “then what of Heimdall? Or any of the others here who died on the Statesman?” Loki shook his head, mute, and Thor went on. “What makes you an exception?”

“I can’t speak to anyone but myself,” Loki said, shaken. “But I...I am not lying, Thor.”

“I believe you,” Thor said after a moment. “That you don’t feel it. That food holds no appeal right now. But this isn’t the first time you’ve been without appetite.” Loki frowned at him, trying to think, but his brain felt sluggish, muddled.

“Any time you were unhappy, or in distress,” Thor said. “Sometimes Mother had to bully you into eating something. Or I did.” There was something aching in Thor’s one blue eye.

Loki opened his mouth, then closed it. Thor let go of his arm.

“Please, Loki,” Thor said. “Don’t make me watch you waste away. I’ve lost you enough for ten lifetimes.”

The air shuddered in and out of his lungs. The idea of eating made his stomach knot, but the pain on Thor’s face made his heart hurt. He searched himself for some suppressed spark, some kind of interest, and found nothing. But maybe he’d just forgotten how it would feel. Or how to feel it.

“I know,” he said finally, quietly, and Thor closed his eyes.

“I’m going to make you some broth,” he said. “Drink it for me?”

Loki made himself nod, exhausted. He didn’t want to. No small part of him revolted against trying.

But Thor...for Thor.

* * *

Thor stood over him while Loki ate, glowering every time he paused. “How does it taste?” He asked, almost belligerently.

“Like nothing,” Loki said, pushing away the half empty bowl. “Are you going to do this every meal?”

“Do I need to?” Loki glanced sharply at Thor, but he looked and sounded serious.

“That is hardly practical.”

“I don’t care if it’s practical,” Thor said. Frustration welled up in Loki’s chest, hot and sudden.

“I am not a child,” Loki snapped.

“I know,” Thor said, voice frustratingly measured. “But I take this very seriously. It should never have gotten this far to begin with. Would not have, perhaps, if I had been paying more attention. I do not intend to make the same mistake twice. If I must sit with you personally at every meal to ensure you eat, I will.”

“Do you expect your _bullying_ me will help?” Loki demanded.

“Then tell me what will!”

They stared at each other. After a long silence, Thor made a low sound and looked away. Loki closed his eyes a moment and looked down, frustration draining so he was just tired. “I don’t know,” he said wearily. “I don’t know that anything can.”

Thor deflated, somewhat, but his expression set. “I will not believe that,” he said firmly. “And are you going to be so quick to give up?”

“Thor,” Loki said, but Thor glowered at him so hard that Loki stopped there. He knew a battle he could not win when he saw one.

“Eat the rest of that,” Thor said, gesturing at the broth. “And then rest.”

Loki pressed his lips together, but forced the rest of it down. An hour later, he was spitting it back up, stomach cramping in revolt. Thor rubbed his back, making soothing noises. “See?” Loki said, when he could speak again.

“You’re just not used to it,” Thor said. “That’s all. We’ll...we’ll start easier, at dinner.”

He curled up around his knotted guts, head spinning. For just a moment, he hated Thor, but the emotion washed away as quickly as it had come. “Stop,” he said. “Just…”

“No,” Thor said, implacable. “I told you. I have lost you enough. I am not going to watch you starve.”

And that, Loki knew, was that. There was no arguing with that tone of voice. Perhaps he should be touched by Thor’s care; just now, he only felt tired.

* * *

Thor was as good as his word.

He hovered. He glared. He did everything but force food down Loki’s throat, and when Loki snapped at him he simply held his ground and waited, immovable as a mountain.

The first two days felt like a war, less with Thor and more with his own body. He barely kept down the little he managed to take in. He was exhausted, weak, sick. Everything he ate felt like a lead weight in his stomach, something foreign and unwanted.

“This isn’t working,” Loki hissed on the third day, dropping his spoon into the oatmeal he hadn’t yet touched.

“It’ll get better,” Thor said, sitting across from him and watching closely.

“What makes you so sure?” Loki said nastily. “Because you want it to be so? I should think you’re old enough by now to know the world doesn’t always bend to your will.”

Thor flushed, but he didn’t look angry, just determined. “Eat your oatmeal.”

Loki hissed at him again. “And if I don’t?”

Thor’s hands came down flat on the table with a bang. “There are human hospitals I could take you to,” he said. “Where they would put a tube down your throat if you refused to eat. Is that what you want?”

Loki started back, eyes widening, and Thor slowly slumped. “I know it isn’t,” he said. “It isn’t what I want, either. Should I beg, Loki? Plead with you to keep yourself alive?” His voice shook, very slightly. Loki could hear the fear in it, and shame drove out the roiling resentment, leaving him feeling small, rotten, and nauseated.

“I don’t want you to beg,” he said weakly, and made himself take a small bite of oatmeal. The relief on Thor’s face had shame sinking its teeth into his throat, choking him, and he clenched his free hand on his thigh so he didn’t vomit.

“I am sorry,” Thor said finally, after Loki had been eating, slowly, for several minutes of silence. He paused.

“For what?”

“I should not have...threatened you.”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Loki said quietly. Thor winced.

“I don’t know what I am doing.”

“I know,” Loki said, but he didn’t mean it to be unkind. “You are...doing your best.” It was all the comfort he thought he could offer. By the look Thor gave him, it was very little. Loki turned his eyes back down and went back to the slow, laborious process of feeding himself, forcing his body to accept something he did not want.

* * *

At first Loki thought the melon had gone off.

Thor had deputized Heimdall, apparently, while he was busy in some meeting with the Norwegian government - at least, Loki didn’t think he was here for the pleasure of Loki’s company over breakfast. He was less obvious about watching than Thor was, though. He noticed when Loki stopped eating and frowned down at his bowl of fruit, though.

“Is something the matter?” he asked. Loki glanced at him, then back down, and wrinkled his nose.

“Something is odd about it,” he said.

“It should be fresh,” Heimdall said, studying him with that excruciatingly intense gaze.

It wasn’t _rot,_ Loki thought. Not exactly. And it _smelled_ fine. It was just that it tasted…

Loki fell still. There it was: it tasted. Not like ash, or paper. His tongue couldn’t quite identify what it _was_ like, or if he liked it or not, only that it was, and he could tell.

He took another bite, cautiously, with the same result. Then shoved the bowl away, a strange panic battering against his ribs

“Loki,” Heimdall said, “what is it?” He shook his head, wordless.

_What are you afraid of?_ Jeered a voice at the back of his mind. _What is it you are running from?_

“I can’t,” Loki forced out. His voice shook. “I can’t-” He wanted to run. To vomit, purge himself, empty out everything inside until he dwindled to nothing and vanished.

“ _Loki,_ ” Heimdall said, the authority in his voice jarring Loki back to himself. He took a few harsh, panting breaths and fought for control of himself. “Do I need to call your brother?”

“No,” Loki said. “Please don’t.”

Heimdall just looked at him with narrowed eyes for several long moments before nodding. “Very well,” he said. “Will you tell me what just happened?”

_I can taste again, and it terrifies me._ “No.”

“Very well,” Heimdall said again, audibly displeased. “But I will tell Thor the truth when he asks how things went.”

Loki closed his eyes and slumped forward, elbows on the table. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

* * *

He pretended to be asleep when Thor returned, and was relieved when his brother didn’t try to wake him. Rolling to his back, he stared up at the ceiling and thought.

_What are you afraid of, little prince?_

So much.

_Why did you stop eating to begin with?_

Because he hadn’t needed to. Because he wasn’t hungry, didn’t want t.

_Thor thinks you want to die._

He was wrong. He was wrong - Loki didn’t want to die, he’d done it before _, been there, done that,_ as Midgardians would say. And before that, on Svartalfheim, and before that, on Sanctuary; before that, in the Void, and perhaps even before that on Jotunheim. _Your birthright was to die._ And yet and yet and _yet._

He didn’t want to die.

But he didn’t know that he wanted to live, either.

Loki stared blankly upward, something that wasn’t hunger gnawing at his gut.

_You’d better choose. You can’t have it both ways._

He rolled out of bed and went down to the beach, sitting down and watching the waves wash over the rocks. He thought about Thor, and Thanos’s hand around his throat, and Asgard, and the longing for oblivion.

_What do you want?_ he asked himself. _What do you deserve to have?_

* * *

Thor found him there the next morning. He came scrambling down, and Loki could feel his mingled relief and anger in the air like a snake sensing movement. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said before Thor could speak. “I’m sorry if I worried you.”

“You did,” Thor said, voice raw. “I thought you might have - hurt yourself.”

“I am not going to try to kill myself,” Loki said.

Thor made a noise at the back of his throat. “Isn’t that what you were doing?” he asked, brittle. “Isn’t that what you _did,_ before?”

Loki shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. “Even now, it is…” He paused, and took a ragged breath. “These days it feels almost as though I only live between deaths. Cut off and restarted, again and again. Is that life? Or just a sort of...suspended animation?”

He heard Thor’s breathing catch. “I told you,” he said. “You are alive. And I will not - will _not_ allow any harm to come to you.”

Loki closed his eyes. “You cannot possibly promise that. You did not ‘allow’ it before. It still happened.” Thor made a sound like Loki had struck him, but did not disagree.

“I am tired, Thor,” Loki said. “Tired of rebuilding myself, only to be torn apart again.”

“That isn’t how it will be,” Thor said. “Not this time.”

“How do you know?”

“Loki…” The anguish in Thor’s voice hurt like a blade through his chest. He said nothing, and his brother came, finally, and sat down beside him. “What can I do?”

He didn’t turn, and didn’t know how to answer. Thor laid a hand gently on his shoulder.

Loki took a deep breath and let go of the last piece. “I am afraid to let myself be alive.”

“But you are,” Thor said. “Alive. And here, with me. And I...does it mean nothing, that I need you?”

_I need you._ Those words warmed him. They terrified him. “I will fail you.”

“I don’t think you will.”

“Thor…”

“Can you not trust me to know something of my own brother?” Thor said. Loki ached, but he caught himself leaning toward his brother, into the light touch of his hand. “Stay,” Thor said, little more than a whisper. “Please.”

_Damn you,_ Loki thought, but there was no real anger in it.

“It’s time for breakfast,” Thor said, when Loki did not speak. “Would you come back with me?”

“Yes,” Loki said. “All right.” He let Thor pull him to his feet.

He had a slice of toast, spread with lingonberry jam. It exploded on his tongue, sour and tart with just a hint of sweetness.

After, he licked the knife clean.


End file.
